


Parallel

by DragonFlower99



Category: Naruto
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 12:28:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20436035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonFlower99/pseuds/DragonFlower99
Summary: Maybe in another universe they got dealt better hands. Maybe. All Tobirama knows for sure is that in this one, his brother is dead and the world is ending all because of one man: Uchiha Madara.





	Parallel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueenPotema](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenPotema/gifts).

> Not what you think. You'll probably be able to tell that in the first paragraph though. 
> 
> Trigger Warning! Contains suicide and major character death so take care of yourselves my dears. 
> 
> This work is a gift for the lovely QueenPotema who inspired me to write it with a single 'What if'

Senju Hashirama fears that he has lost his ability to feel as he watches his best friend's body lit aflame by a grief stricken Izuna. He feels drained, empty and he can't even cry as the flames climb over the body. He wonders how it could have gotten this far, how he let Madara be driven to this. He wonders why the one time it actually counted; he couldn't be the hero he was in everyone else's eyes.

To an outsider, it would seem as if he was being ridiculous, beating himself up over what couldn't be helped, but Hashirama knows better. He knows that Madara had come to him at the end of his rope, hurt, breaking right down the middle and desperate for comfort, and Hashirama had brushed the man off when he needed him most. He knows that if he had not turned Madara away when he begged for help in the only way the Uchiha had known how, then Madara would be by his side still breathing and smiling and laughing like he once had. He wouldn't be burning on a pyre after slitting his own throat by the river where they played as children.

All Hashirama can think about is the night before he found Madara's body. The Uchiha came into the Hokage's office late. The work had been brutal that day, meetings had frayed Hashirama's nerves and Tobirama had hounded him about unfinished paperwork then left him with a stack nearly two feet high. Still, when Madara arrived and climbed through the window obviously a wreck, he should have set the work aside. It was not urgent enough to warrant letting his best friend down when he needed help. Instead, he sighed aloud as if Madara was an inconvenience and continued working.

"Are you here to lecture me too?" Hashirama had grumbled before Madara could speak.

"What? No. I... I just came to talk." Madara replied.

Hashirama huffed and rested his head in his free hand, "I would rather you had come to help with all this stupid paperwork. I'll be up all night at this rate."

Madara was silent for a long while, and thinking back on it, it was likely because of the deep breaths he had to repeatedly take to hold himself back from a nervous breakdown, but finally he breaths out, "Ok."

Hashirama looked incredulously at his friend who grabbed half the stack and a pen and sat across from him. Madara abhorred desk work even more than he did and was much more productive and content in the field doing missions and teaching battle tactics. Seeing him doing paperwork was like seeing a solar eclipse; rare and slightly disconcerting. There was only one thing that could have upset him so much that he would be here doing something he despised so vehemently: Izuna.

"What's so bad at home you had to come here to fill out these forms?" Hashirama asked as he returned to his own stack.

"Just had a fight with Izuna." Madara replied. He refused to look up and his body was shaking. His grip on his pen was so tight as he wrote Hashirama thought it may break.

"... Don't you two fight pretty much all the time?" Hashirama asked skeptically. Honestly the two did spar almost every day, one little fight shouldn't have been that bad. Maybe Madara had lost and was embarrassed Hashirama had thought. He was such an idiot.

"With fists, yes." Madara whispered.

"What do you mean?"

"It was more of an... argument. Izuna is displeased with some recent events." Madara answered.

"Oh, I get it, you got a lecture, didn't you? Tobirama does it to me aaallll the time, Madara. It's not the end of the world just because your little brother scolded you." Hashirama drawled, "Besides, he was probably right. Tobi always is. Sometimes, you need someone to tell you when you are wrong you know?"

"... I... suppose that is true. I was just... afraid of him being right." Madara seemed to sink into his chair. His mood plummeted even lower, but Hashirama could not for the life of him find out why.

"You definitely hate being wrong!" Hashirama said jokingly. He expected to lighten the mood a little, or to at least get a reaction, but Madara never looked up from the forms he was filling out.

"I overreacted was all." the raven said weakly. The pen in his hand squeaked in his brutal grip.

"You're going to break that pen and get ink everywhere and then we will both never hear the end of it from Tobi." Hashirama moaned.

"Sorry." Madara said in a clipped tone.

Hashirama pulled his best pout at his friend’s continued bad mood, "Honestly Madara, you are way too sensitive. Lighten up a little."

Madara didn’t respond to that beyond dipping his head a bit so his hair covered most of his face. The rest of their working passed in silence until Hashirama rose to leave with Madara scribbling on a blank piece of paper for a reason he could not discern at the time.

"Hashirama?" Madara called.

"Yea?" Hashirama answered turning back to face his friend.

"You are a good medical shinobi. Can you do an eye transplant?"

"You mean like... the one you did from Izuna? I suppose... I could? Why is there a... replacement? For Izuna that is? Or does someone else need one? Also, can't you do it? You did before."

"Just wondered if you could." Madara replied. And that was it. Walls down: No more entry.

"Ooook? I will see you tomorrow?" Hashirama asked as he turned back to the doorway.

"Maybe not."

Hashirama spared Madara one last glance after the odd answer. He wanted to ask what it meant, why Madara seemed so dejected still, but he didn't think the other man would answer him even if he did. He turned back around and walked away, something he will regret for as long as he lives.

The next morning, he found out what Madara had been writing on that paper.

_Hashirama,_

_I apologize for the paperwork this will cause. I know how much you hate it. I am no longer needed, as much as I hate to admit that. You'll take good care of the village, and Izuna will be a better clan head then me. I can no longer justify hanging around when all I accomplish is darkening the lives of others. I am truly happy that you never gave up on our dream, and I am very grateful for having been able to see it sprout. Thank you for that. I know you will pass it down to good hands. Please, watch over Izuna for me._

_I will be by the river. I have one final request for you, my only friend. I want you to return my brother's eyes to him. He will need them to see the future. Please, make sure he gets them._

_Madara._

Hashirama's heart stopped in his chest and he dashed to the place Madara's note said to look.

He found his childhood friend dead in a puddle of his own blood on the bank of the river they use to skip stones on with his eyes open but dull and a kunai resting in his hand.

Irrationally, Hashirama had dashed forward and began trying to heal Madara. The man was dead already, the flesh wasn't going to rejoin but he tried anyway. He noted a little hysterically that Madara was still warm. He hadn't been dead long; he probably wanted the eyes he asked in his note to be transplanted to stay fresh. Hashirama pushed as much of his chakra as he could manage into his healing jutsu. A choked sob escaped him when the jagged wound in Madara's neck didn't respond at all.

Hashirama didn't stop trying until Tobirama showed up and physically drug him away from Madara's body.

"He's gone, Anija. You have to stop." His little brother said softly and Hashirama stilled his struggling to stare at the corpse by the river.

Once he was sure Hashirama had settled, Tobirama let go and allowed him to sink to the pebble covered earth on his knees, "I... I did this." Is all he said before he hung his head and allowed the tears to drop down his face.

"No, you did not. Madara did." Tobirama said firmly.

"Yes, I did. All he wanted was a little comfort last night. He was hurting so badly that he wanted to die, and I told him he was too sensitive and then I just abandoned him." the guilt was and is too much to bear.

"Be that as it may, this was his choice. It is not your fault."

"... Izuna. He's probably... worried. Will you go get him? He should know."

"I will go."

Hashirama stared at Madara as his brother left willing himself not to feel the raging tempests of grief and guilt just as he now stares at Madara's flaming pyre fearing he has succeeded.

Uchiha Izuna is lost. He staggers home with his brother's ashes in a gold urn. He will go alone eventually to scatter them on the cliff (the Uchiha clan had refused to allow Madara's remains to be scattered at their gravesites, because he had 'dishonored the clan' by committing suicide. It took all he had not to kill all of them for their disrespect and insolence.) He can't let go yet though. He can't. Not until the nightmares stop at least.

He hadn't had his sight back then, but his dreams still manage to torment him with the sight of his brother walking away for the last time.

A question haunts him endlessly as well: why had he said such awful horrible things? When he knew Madara had already suffered the rejection of their clan which he defended relentlessly and the village he had dreamed of since he was a child. When he knew that Madara would not be able or willing to endure rejection from him as well. When he knew the Hokage, the only other soul Madara was close to, was one who tended the hurts of many and had not the time, sight, nor gile to tend to the overwhelming hurt of one.

Izuna will never forget how he ended his brother's life without ever drawing a blade.

He had been stressed, and worried. His day was hell that day and he was in a horrible mood already when he heard whispers that the next Hokage was going to be Senju Tobirama, so by the time Madara returned home from his last mission he was irate at best. He ranted to his brother for at least an hour before letting him speak.

"I know things may seem to be going badly but you must believe me when I tell you Hashirama and I will not allow Tobirama, or any Senju for that matter, to slight the Uchiha. Besides which, I think you judge Tobirama too harshly. He really isn't such a terrible person, he trains Kagami with equal care to his other students and I have heard him advocating for equality on both sides several times." Madara said.

Izuna snorted, "You can't honestly trust him."

"I do. He has not done anything so far to earn my distrust. And he saved your life."

"Because he knew if he did, he could manipulate you! I went along with this because it was what you thought was best and I trusted your judgement, but everything I feared would happen is HAPPENING and you are letting it!"

Izuna hears his brother shift and feels his chakra darken slightly with hurt and realistically that's when Izuna should have stopped and gone to cool down until he could explain his concerns in a civilized manner, "'Trusted.' past tense? You do not trust me Otouto?"

"Right now? No, I fucking don't!" Madara flinched but Izuna just plowed on, "I want to, but you are making it impossible! How can you be the blind one when I'm the one who gave up my eyes?!"

"I'm doing the best I can. I don't think the situation is as dire as you are making it out to be." Madara said in a slight tone that was very unlike him.

"Then you're a fool and you will lead our clan to RUIN! I can't believe I wasted my eyes on you! I can't believe out of all our brothers YOU are the one standing here! You don't deserve to be here! Any of them would have been a better leader for our clan than you!" Izuna shouted angrily.

He slapped a hand over his mouth the moment after he said it. Never before had he so quickly regretted something.

"Oh." was all Madara was able to force out after a pregnant pause, but it was enough to immediately tell Izuna that he was devastated.

The remnants Izuna's anger seeped away leaving only the crushing regret behind. He only said those things because he was angry and not thinking, but Madara believed every word. Izuna's older brother had always struggled heavily with feelings of inadequacy left by their father, and for him to use that against the man so savagely was unforgivable.

"I didn't mean that."

There was a slight shuffle of fabric which Izuna knew without his sight was Madara shifting and crossing his arms over his chest as he tended to do when he was upset.

Madara replied, "Yes you did. Its okay, I understand. I think I am going to go for a walk..."

"Aniki, I'm sorry. That was uncalled for and I shouldn't have-"

"Its okay. You don't have to apologize for the way you feel." Madara mumbled.

"I don't-" Izuna began but he heard the door open and close and he knew Madara left.

He just stood there in the living room for a long time thinking about the way Madara's voice sounded before he left. Izuna couldn't see, but he knew Madara as well as he knew himself, he knew what his brother's voice sounded like when he was crying. Izuna felt disgusted with himself. He may have been worried and angry, but that didn't give him the right to hurt his brother over it.

He didn't sleep a wink that night, a feeling of unease settled heavy in his gut and prevented him from resting. Madara didn't come home like he should have. They have argued before, and sometimes one of them needed to step out for air, but they always returned to make amends. Madara didn't come back and as Izuna felt the sensation of sunlight on his skin, his sign that dawn had arrived, worry made his chest constrict.

He had attacked his brother's biggest weak spot, something they both trusted each other not to do, maybe Madara just didn't want to see him anymore. Maybe he felt too betrayed to even consider coming home to speak to Izuna. His heart clenched painfully at the thought. He wishes now that would have been the truth.

At dawn, a knock came at the door. Izuna knew from his sensory abilities which replaced his sight that it was Tobirama at the door, not who he desperately wanted it to be. There was no reason for Tobirama to be there though, not unless... Not unless there was some sort of emergency or something had happened to Madara.

His stomach did wild flips as he rose to answer the door.

"Senju." was his snipped greeting.

"Uchiha."

"What do you want?"

"I think the best way to say this is bluntly… Your brother is dead."

Izuna reeled back a little bit, it felt like the air had been knocked out of him, "No. No, he's not."

"He took his own life sometime this morning."

Izuna wheezed and nearly fell. Suicide. Madara. It didn't make sense. He couldn't believe it.

"Liar! Where is he?! Where is my Aniki?!"

Tobirama sighed, "You can follow me based on sensory location, right?"

Normally he would have been insulted by that question as Tobirama should have already known he was still very capable even blind but with so much panic in his mind there was no room for insult. He nodded. It seemed to take hours to get to that riverbank, but finally they landed on the large familiar pebbles.

"Where is he?" Izuna demanded when he couldn't sense his brother.

"Beside Anija." Tobirama said simply.

Izuna had become accustomed to two things in place of his sight; normal sensory techniques that got much sharper, and a type of sensory technique using wind style that allowed him to manipulate the air to show him shapes, sizes, and depths. Sure enough, right beside the overwhelmingly grieved chakra of the Hokage, was the crumpled form of the shape that he had come to recognize as Madara. Where his brother's blazing fire should have been, there was nothing but a void.

Tears fell Izuna's cheeks as he stumbled towards the shell of his brother. He fell to his knees beside him and slowly reached out to stroke a cheek. His hand met cold skin and he choked on a sob.

"No." Izuna said, "Please, no."

"I'm sorry." Hashirama whispered.

"No no nononononono!" Izuna screamed. "He wouldn't leave me like this. He wouldn't. This can't be real. Madara!"

He lifted his brother into his arms and held him to his chest. The smell of blood hit him hard and the dam broke. Ugly sobs ripped out of him as he wrapped himself around Madara.

It took nearly half an hour for him to calm down but even once he did, he just sat there holding the cold body of his brother. He had no intention of moving. There was no point, his world was lying in his lap shattered and unmoving.

"Izuna." the Hokage's voice called from outside his trance.

"What?" Izuna said icily.

"M-Madara left a note. Several of them. I... he wanted me to return your eyes to you."

Of course he did. Because Izuna told his brother that he had wasted that gift. Because Madara had always valued Izuna's happiness and safety over his own and he thought dying and giving Izuna his eyes back would make him happier. Because Izuna had told Madara that he wasn't good enough, just like their father had when their oldest brother died, like their clan did, like the village had and Madara believed him without question because that's what he had already decided about himself.

He felt sick to his stomach.

Izuna wanted to refuse, but how could he refuse Madara's final wish? He owed his brother so many things that he would not be able to repay already. Besides which, he wanted to be able to read Madara's letters. He wanted to know what was on his brother's mind, at the end even if he was reasonably certain he already did.

"Do it." Izuna said.

"Ok" Hashirama agreed without pause.

All things considered; it was far less painful physically to have his eyes returned than it was to remove them. Maybe the pain had been muted by the agony in his chest though.

With the eldest Senju's healing, he had his sight back in under an hour. He remembered the weeks it took him and Madara to heal from the procedure last time and thought how much easier it could have been if they were capable of this healing.

He could immediately feel a difference in his vision as compared to how it had been before, and he knows even though they were his eyes, they had enough of Madara within them that he would not have to worry about blindness.

The moment he opened his eyes and saw the world for the first time in years, he hated himself for feeling no joy in its beauty. 'Madara died for this' was all he could think, 'he died to make you happy and you can't even give him that.'

He dropped his head to look at his brother and immediately wished to be blind again. The sight is still burned in his memory, blood that was nearly black, a jagged ugly wound in the neck, eyes gone, and bloody cheeks will forever haunt him.

"I'm sorry." Izuna whispered, "I really didn't mean it. I swear, I didn't."

"I... I don't know what happened between you two, but this isn't your fault. He came to me for comfort and I didn't even see that he was hurt. It's my fault."

"You don't know what you are talking about." Izuna snapped. He did not want to hear lies. He definitely did not want to hear people who barely knew either of them spewing said lies.

"But he-"

Izuna immediately interrupted the Hokage, "Did you know Madara was not originally the heir of the Uchiha clan? He was Tajima's second born not first. Our oldest brother was named Ryota. He was considered a prodigy. Awakened his Sharingan at age 5 when and picked up techniques incredibly quickly. Or so I was told."

Hashirama blinked slowly, visible confusion swimming in his eyes.

"One day he and Madara were out hunting." Izuna continued, "Simple stuff usually. But that day nature had different plans. This huge boar charged out of nowhere at Madara. He panicked and fell. Would have gotten trampled except Ryota, threw him out of the way and was trampled instead. Died on impact. Pretty ironic to die like that during a bloody clan war huh? Our father was not amused. He yelled at Madara for hours after the body was retrieved, told him that he shouldn't have allowed Ryota to die, that it was his fault, that he was an awful person for not having even gained his Sharingan from it, and that he'd never be half as useful as Ryota. I was young, but I remember Madara being inconsolable for days afterwards. He just cried and cried. Tajima would berate him often after that when he made mistakes and tell him how useless he was and how much better it would have been if Ryota had lived instead. There's only so many times a kid can hear that from his own father before he just accepts it as the truth. He worked himself ragged trying to be good enough for years afterwards, but Tajima was never satisfied, and he never met his own impossible standards either."

"I-"

"You want to know what the last thing I said to him was? I told him-" Izuna said but his voice cracked horribly in the middle, "I told him he wasn't good enough. That I would have rather had one of our other brothers at my side. The very thing I already knew he believed and feared that I believed deep down. And you are really going to sit there and try to tell me that's not why he's dead?"

"I... I still don't think it was your fault." Hashirama replied weakly.

Izuna shook his head slowly, "Where are his letters? I want to see them."

Hashirama pushed a neatly folded piece of paper into Izuna's field of vision, "This one has your name on it. You can see mine too if you want. And I am sure Tobi wouldn't mind showing you his."

Izuna laid Madara's body gently on his lap before taking the paper with shaking hands.

_Izuna,_

_I want you to know I'm sorry. I know I have hurt you, and that I am going to again to some degree, and I hope someday you can forgive me. I know you will make a much better leader than I ever could have hoped to be. I only ask that you try to get along with everyone. Surround yourself with love on all sides so that you will never be bound by hatred. Break the cycle. I tried but I wasn't good enough to make a difference, you are. I love you very much, always remember that if it means anything to you. If not... well I love you anyway._

_Madara_

Izuna very carefully folded the letter back and stored it away. He found his tears had dried up, even though he felt like crying.

His brother left the world believing he was unwanted, and Izuna can never forgive himself for it. All he wants is a chance to make amends, but it just isn't possible in this world.

Senju Tobirama would like to say that he feels no blame at all for the entire situation, that Madara's choice was his own and in no way was it anyone else's fault. He does in fact say it several times to both Hashirama and Izuna. Yet just like neither of them believe a word, neither can he believe himself.

Tobirama was never very close to Madara, but he considered Izuna his rival and had a high respect for both brothers, in the same way one respects and reveres a tornado or a hurricane. He frequently saw them here and there and their presence was a constant which, after the peace came and the village began to rise, became a comfort. But they were not close. Whenever Tobirama saw them it was from afar. He never made an attempt to cross the distance, though he wanted to many times.

He watched and said nothing while Madara reached out in vain to connect with others and his mental state declined.

He did not warn Izuna as he should have when he spotted specks of blood on Madara's sleeves.

He did not go to Hashirama as he felt he should have when he witnessed Madara being isolated by the village.

He never attempted to offer Madara reprieve from the pain he saw growing in the other man's eyes, though he had the power to offer his friendship and ease the burn of rejection.

He didn't stop the Uchiha when he was patrolling that night and saw him leaving the village with nothing on his person except a single kunai gripped in a quivering hand.

He never did anything but watch, because it was none of his business right?

Tobirama regrets doing nothing, because now he has no choice but to watch.

He watches as his rival spirals into a grief driven madness.

He has to watch as his brother turns to even heavier alcohol and gambling to escape his guilt and gradually loses himself in the process.

He watches Izuna become the greatest threat the budding peace has ever seen on the back of a monstrous fox.

He arrives just in time to watch as his drunken brother is cut down despite being the most powerful shinobi of their generation, simply because he had launched into battle totally inebriated.

He watches, powerless, as Izuna ends the world as they know it and all the while the message Madara left him weighs on him heavier each day.

It read simply: _'You have a good heart, use it to safeguard the future.'_


End file.
